Dear members and friends of the Covenant Church, Tomorrow our denomination will begin its 2018 annual meeting — one that many expect to be a landmark event, as delegates vote on new leaders amid intensifying debate about the ECC’s position on human sexuality and marriage. Part of me wishes that I were on the floor … More My (Love) Letter to the Covenant Church
Thanks to Cheryll Fong, Joyce Denham, Pastor Matt Kennedy, and all my other wonderful hosts this past weekend at Minneapolis’ Bethlehem Covenant Church. We discussed the Pietist Option on Friday night and Saturday morning, then I preached this sermon on 2 Kings 2:1-15 at worship services on Sunday. Don’t let anyone tell you that God … More Set Down Your Mantle
Among other upcoming speaking engagements, I’m eager to return to Bethlehem Covenant Church in Minneapolis for a multi-day seminar (February 9-11) entitled Always Reforming: The Pietist Option for Covenanters and Other Protestants. The title comes from the venerable, vexing Protestant idea that the church is “reformed, and always reforming” (ecclesia semper reformanda est). It’s a line … More Always Reforming, Always Planting
We’re into the last week of our countdown to October 3rd, when The Pietist Option: Hope for the Renewal of Christianity hits shelves. So let me offer one more glimpse into the pages of our book: having shared the acknowledgments, let me now show everyone the book’s dedication. If you didn’t know Jim and Glen and had … More The Pietist Option Is Dedicated to…
So look what showed up on my doorstep this morning! We’re still about four weeks away from The Pietist Option hitting bookstore shelves, but getting author’s copies from InterVarsity Press made it feel so much closer. Even more so than when I wrote this kind of post two years ago, it’s hugely gratifying to see and hold actual … More Acknowledgments from The Pietist Option
Here… • The Confessing Faculty statement drew attention from Inside Higher Ed (and, a day later, The Chronicle of Higher Education), though my colleague and co-signer Ray VanArragon had some reservations about it. • Was 2016 a turning point in the history of American evangelicalism? Martin Marty, Grant Wacker, and other historians weighed in. • As we prepared to say farewell … More That Was The Week That Was
I hadn’t realized how much I would miss Glen Wiberg until halfway through worship last Sunday at Salem. As soon as I opened the bulletin and saw a Lina Sandell song listed as the pulpit hymn, I knew my voice would tighten. But the tears began to flow as I looked over to Glen’s former spot in … More “Plotting the Resurrection”: Final Thoughts on Glen Wiberg
“The [Pietistic] tradition still lives,” theologian John Weborg once reassured his friend, Glen Wiberg. “But to new people the word Pietism is an unknown word. Pietism is the way the pastor does things.” So while I appreciate having the chance to write a book on Pietism with my pastor, I wish that anyone interested in Pietism could just spend … More “Pietism is the way the pastor does things”: Glen Wiberg (1925-2017)
So how can Christians and churches protect themselves from the spiritual dangers that I wrote about earlier this week? You won’t be surprised to learn that I think it’s got to start with looking to the past. But if it’s too self-serving for me to say that, then take it from a non-historian: The inner lives of many have been … More Why Churches Like Mine Need to Recover an Immigrant Memory
A second parable I’ve been thinking about today: The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full … More Parables: Seeds
The Pietist Schoolman 